Month: October 2014

It’s been a beautiful autumn; hasn’t it?! I love the rich fall colors and never tire of using them in my designs. This week’s SUO challenge is titled “The Treats the Thing.” I decided to make a favor that could couple as a place card setting for a Thanksgiving dinner table. I happened across a tutorial by Julie Davison for this little card box with a drawer design and decided it would work beautifully for the favor I was envisioning. I used a piece of 3” x 12” Old Olive as my base and ran my Speckled Jumbo Wheel across the flat base with Early Espresso ink. The base was scored at 3”, 4”, 7”, 8” and 11.” I stamped my greeting on the interior flap and then simply folded the score lines to form the container for the drawer; a single strip of red line on the end tab holds the box together.

The drawer was formed from a 2-1/4” square piece which was scored at one inch on each side and then assembled. The drawer holds 6 Hershey nuggets.
For the image I stamped the flowers from Just Believe with Versamark onto a piece of Very Vanilla and then used clear embossing powder to emboss the image. When stamping, I was careful to leave an open space so that a name could be written onto the favor and used as a place card at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Next, I simply inked up three sponges with Old Olive, Crushed Curry and Cajun Craze and sponged the colors in a circular motion across the image. To add a finishing touch to the drawer; I punched a 1-1/4″ circle and mounted it onto the drawer with adhesive, then added a Cajun Craze candy dot to serve as a mock drawer handle.

A good friend of mine has been on my heart recently; so, I wanted to make a thinking of you card to send her way. My goal was to design a non-Halloween-ish card using this week’s Pals Paper Arts colors of Tangelo Twist, Basic Black and Very Vanilla. I wanted a light, cheery feel to the card, so I selected the open patterned polka dot DSP from Modern Medley and then focused on keeping Very Vanilla as the primary color. A few rhinestone enhanced sequins added a nice clean accent to the card. Then to balance the image, I placed a simple heart in the bottom corner and accented it, also, with a rhinestone. To pull everything together, I added the adorable little bird from For the Birds to the envelope and colored the heart with Tangelo Twist.

There’s something about a thematic gift box that makes a little unexpected gift even more special. When I saw Pootles’ tutorial on how to make a nail polish holder box, I thought how cute it would be to decorate the box with a punch art bottle of nail polish. I’d remembered seeing Michele Zindorf use the owl punch for a nail polish bottle, so I thought I’d give it a try.

This week’s Colour Q Challenge commemorating breast cancer awareness, seemed to be an excellent challenge to showcase my project. This adorable little box will hold two bottles of nail polish (or SU reinkers!). I’ll definitely have some of these boxes prepared for my Christmas Open House; they’ll be “donning” Real Red “bottles of polish.”

It’s hard to tell from the picture; but, the “For You’ was stamped with Versamark, then embossed with silver embossing powder.

I walked into my studio last night and decided I was going to just play and do whatever struck my fancy. I’d been wanting to make an autumn card using the Grateful for You stamp from the Merry Everything set; so, choosing my image was easy. Next stop was my DSP file; I leafed through the paper until I heard a couple of sheets “calling my name!” I really like the way these two pieces from the Color Me Autumn set complement one another. But, hmmm, the Retrosketch I had chosen for my layout seemed to lend itself to 3 different DSPs. After a couple of seconds, I realized I could use the same DSP on the right, simply by changing the direction of the pattern; the top piece has the diamonds going horizontally, while the bottom piece has the diamonds in a vertical direction. Okay, so I had my image and my paper chosen; but, none of the ribbon on my shelf seemed to work. So, I reached for my ribbon jar. Yes, I have a ribbon jar! All my scrap pieces of ribbon look beautiful in my apothecary styled jar! But, I digress. As I fingered through the ribbon scraps I saw a glimmer of gold – “Ahh, perfect!” The ribbon selection then led me to the new gold metal buttons. A loose shimmery strand from the gold baker’s twine was lying on my desk and seemed to say, “Use me, use me!” Sooo, all my decisions were made; now for the fun of putting it all together! I used the glowing technique once again and was quite pleased with the effect it gave to this stamp. Once I had the card assembled, I felt it needed just a little something more. I remembered my old Creative Memories leaf punch and decided that would offer the festive finishing touch I desired!

Out in the Woods is this week’s SUO challenge, which gave me the perfect opportunity to finally ink up my Ornamental Pine stamp. I’ve got to say, I really, really like this new set; in addition to the pine code, there is also a beautiful Christmas ornament included with the stamps. I’m having a lot of fun playing with this set! I’m thoroughly enjoying the Mossy Meadow color for my autumn cards and am even happy with it for Christmas themed cards. This card was a simple layout using the new Under the Tree DSP (I love the weight of this paper!) I wanted to tie in the Chocolate Chip color with my greeting; so, I punched a Chocolate Chip circle and laid it behind the greeting for a splash of accent. The candy dots are not a perfect match for the Mossy Meadow CS; but, in person the colors are so similar that not man y people would catch the difference. Wherever you are today, I hope that you’re enjoying God’s handiwork of a beautiful fall day!